Intersections: The heat rearranges priorities in Armenia
Something about the summer in Armenia this year is different. Even the locals feel it. Something feels a little strange, a little odd and quite different. It’s hot. Not just “normal” hot, but unbearably dry, you-can’t-even-move hot.
The sun has drained everyone’s energy, sucked them of their ability to perform even the most menial of tasks. Copious amounts of ice cream and watermelon are the only relief here. Even the taxi drivers, wiping away the water collecting above their brows with already damp sleeves, are sweating.
It’s become impossible to deal with, and yet it’s not any different than the heat in Los Angeles. Except it is because this city — unlike sprawling L.A. — is completely walkable. And when faced with a walkable city, you’re meant to take advantage of it. Getting into an air-conditioned car or an air-conditioned building doesn’t really work on this side of the world, or at least doesn’t really fit into the mood of the city the way it does back home.
The heat has given way to incredible nightly thunderstorms, where the sky turns a menacing shade of purple before it unleashes Hollywood-blockbuster-style rain on people who cover their heads with whatever they can manage to find — a purse, a newspaper — before hopping into taxis to make their way home.
Unable to do much else, the heat has also given me a lot of time to think. The subjects that race through my mind are as varied and eclectic as ever — I have the Google search results to prove it. In one evening, I Googled everything from biographies of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” women to Japan’s indigenous populations to the Moldovan wine industry.
It got so hot, I had no choice but to cut my hair. Infamously picky at choosing hair stylists back home, I completely changed course and called to make an appointment at the salon I walk by every day to get to my appointment.
I sat in the chair, with a black cloak covering everything but my head, feeling the individual streams of sweat running down my back as inches of hair littered the ground around me.
It got so hot that my appetite went away and a chance encounter with a scale proved I’d lost almost 10 pounds, without any actual real effort — the best side effect yet of a crazy summer.
The hotter it got, the more I felt frustrated — I had come halfway around the world to work, to report and research, but climbing into a crowded, hot bus to travel on pot-hole-filled roads seemed not the wisest of choices.
“I’ll have to come back when it’s cooler,” I told myself, depressed about not being able to accomplish what I set out to do.
Perhaps heat was trying to tell me something. It was a sign to slow down, to take it easy, to not feel so entrapped in an unforgiving, competitive rat race to constantly produce, to let go of the stress of “not feeling good enough.” It was trying to tell me that it’s OK to say your biggest decision of the day was centered around picking pistachio over rocky road.
Because some days, just enjoying an ice cream cone is enough.
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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.